The Law of Torture: June 2009 Archives

Six Questions for Cynthia Smith on the Legality of Force-feeding at Guantánamo
By Luke Mitchell

The apparent suicide Monday (6-1-09) of thirty-one-year-old Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih, who had been protesting his long imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay by refusing to eat, has brought U.S. force-feed policy back into the news. Many human rights organizations have called for an end to force-feeding, which as practiced at Guantánamo amounts to torture. In MayApril, for an article to be published in the July Harper's Magazine, I attempted to query Dr. Ward Casscells, then the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, about how he might modify that policy since Barack Obama had become president. Cynthia Smith, a Pentagon spokesperson, responded to my written queries (which I have edited here for length) under the requirement that I attribute the answers to her and not Casscells. At the time of the interview, at least thirty prisoners at Guantánamo were being restrained and fed via enteral tube.

Here are the questions by Harper's senior editor Luke Mitchell

A federal judge has ruled that John Yoo, a former Bush administration lawyer who wrote crucial memorandums justifying harsh interrogation techniques, will have to answer in court to accusations that his work led to a prisoner's being tortured and deprived of his constitutional rights. The government had asked Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco to dismiss the case filed by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who spent more than three years in a military brig as an enemy combatant. Judge White denied most elements of Mr. Yoo's motion and quoted a passage from the Federalist Papers that in times of war, nations, to be more safe, "at length become willing to run the risk of being less free."
http://tinyurl.com/mlgbpj

Meanwhile in a second case in the 9th Circuit Court, the Obama administration has increased its defense of secrecy surrounding an alleged CIA program of torture flight, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/13/BAD5186LUA.DTL.